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Dan, do you see actual consumption, or design? How many actual energy bills have you seen? I'd say Ohio is pretty close to my climate, a lot closer than yours, and I've seen hundreds.

This house at 3200 sf (not 5000) should have a TOTAL monthly bill in the $120-200 range. Heating and cooling will be 1/2 of that. Less than half if built well. Less than 1/3 if he's using that high zoot modulating climatemaster.

I have clients with 1800 sf MOBILE HOMES with TOTAL gas consumption less than 650 therms. That's WITHOUT modulating equipment. You are saying this house will use as many btu as 3 of these? They aren't going to build better than a 20 year old double wide?

Dan, do you see actual consumption, or design? How many actual energy bills have you seen? I'd say Ohio is pretty close to my climate, a lot closer than yours, and I've seen hundreds.

This house at 3200 sf (not 5000) should have a TOTAL monthly bill in the $120-200 range. Heating and cooling will be 1/2 of that. Less than half if built well. Less than 1/3 if he's using that high zoot modulating climatemaster.

I have clients with 1800 sf MOBILE HOMES with TOTAL gas consumption less than 650 therms. That's WITHOUT modulating equipment. You are saying this house will use as many btu as 3 of these? They aren't going to build better than a 20 year old double wide?

The OP's drawings actually show 2,200 square foot per floor.

One might expect ~1,300 therms as a seasonal heating requirement for a 4,400 square foot residence with 550 square feet of glass.

No it is not. Any geo system will cost you substantially more than high SEER air to air. AND......did you get a quote to clean out that heat exchanger every year? Just want you to consider all procedures and costs before jumping on the boat...

Energy Star, I would be glad to send you copies of the quotes on both the air-to-air (Carrier) and geothermal (Waterfurnace) systems. I stand by my earlier post that the two systems are comparable in cost when the 30% tax crdit is factored in.

In case you haven't read the earlier posts, the geothermal is pump-and-dump. The water well is not included in the cost because I have to drill a well for domestic water needs anyway.

As for cleaning the heat exchanger, I plan to do that myself. I rarely hire someone to do home repairs and maintenance, preferring instead to handle myself. I guess I'll have to assign a value to my time....

Ted accused me of being emotionally committed to geothermal. I am a Mech. Engr. (by training although I am not employed in the field). I also have been in sales for 30+ years. Anyone who has dealt with engineering types in a sales situation knows that they do not make decisions based on emotion....it's all about the numbers.

Now with the back and forth between you and Dan, I think the correct answer is somewhere between you two.

My last house was about 3,400 sq ft. It was a relatively energy efficient design...2 story with partial basement, rectangular shape with, 2x6 walls and above average tightness (documented with a free blower door test thanks to the local electric co-op). I kept records of all electric and LP gas usage over the 25 years I lived there (yep, I plead guilty...I'm anal as hell!). We kept the thermostat at 66-67 degrees in winter and 75-77 degrees in summer.

Of course, every winter is different but my best estimate is that it was costing me about $1,200 in recent years to heat and cool and about $350 to heat water. This was based on a moderately efficient Carrier HP with LP backup. One of my complaints about this setup is that the control logic called for the LP to finish the heating cycle after the defrost was complete...so, the LP furnace ran a lot when the HP could have handled the load...Grrrr! I called Carrier and they offered no alternative.

Had we kept the thermostat at 70-72 in winter and 72 or 74 in summer, I would guess that our total heating/cooling costs would have been close to $1,500 to $1,600 per year.

As for your calculations, Dan, you are forgetting the higher cost of backup heat when temps are too low for the HP and also during defrost cycles. Also, you used $ .08 per KwH....I wish I could buy electricity for that. In my last house I was using about 350 gallons of LP just for backup heat. If I had electric backup, the cost would have not been much different at $2 per gallon for LP and $ .10 per KwH for electric.

So, I think I probably am looking at savings of $500 easily with geothermal in my new house (heating/cooling and water heating. Since the original cost is about the same, it's an easy decision for me to opt for the geothermal.

One of the geothermal companies I got a quote from installs a seperate meter on EVERY ONE of their installations. The reason is obvious...it provides hard evidence of what their customers are spending for heating and cooling. If they exagerate savings it would catch up with them real quickly.

One last comment on Energy Star's post where he said that no geothermal mfr. will market an area with natural gas....here in the Midwest, most of the people living in the cities and villages have NG available. However, no one living in the rural areas have access to NG. So, there are many geothermal installations in the rrural area and virtually none in the cities. Obviously, any marketing of geothermal is intended for those people who can't get NG.

Tedkidd and energy star, how many geothermal systems have you installed/sold in the past two years?

If that number is zero then you obviously don't know the differences between air source and geo. I started geo aout 4 years ago, really got into it about 3 years ago and realized the HUGE differences that are sometimes intangible benefits. Can you promise your fancy carrier Invertor air source will last 25 years out in the elements? Geo HAS stood up to the test of time and has efficiencies up to 5.3COP and 41EER.

And to energy star, we routinely market geo to area with natural gas because it is not the most efficient. If natural gas was the most efficient then why do we all talk aout heat pumps in dual fuel operation. I just installed my first WaterFurnace variable capacity in a gas area about two weeks ago. They wanted it because of things that had no relation to payback. Now in Batmans case there is an instant not even a 5 year payback that I often shoot for when designing a system.

Batman71 if you would like I can also look at those proposals for you since I am a WaterFurnace dealer. My email is Travis at my username dot com

Sky it seems to me you have been to too many sales classes at Water Furnace. I have put in many systems, all kinds and it is a financial loser in my opinion. If you consider all costs. AND you don't actually install them yourself do you, you have installer's correct? You ar coming at this from the paper end not an applied end 15 years down the road.

ps: I used to pick the Water Furnace regional rep up at the air port to bring him to our shop, he is the one that told us about how water furnace will not market in an area with nat gas.

As for your calculations, Dan, you are forgetting the higher cost of backup heat when temps are too low for the HP and also during defrost cycles. Also, you used $ .08 per KwH....I wish I could buy electricity for that. In my last house I was using about 350 gallons of LP just for backup heat. If I had electric backup, the cost would have not been much different at $2 per gallon for LP and $ .10 per KwH for electric.

I HAVE seen 40 year old ashp's still operating in Fairport and honeye falls. Last year I replace an 8 year old pump n dump in Victor Ny. And this was a Hydron Module! So 25 year arguments wear dentures.

The one advantage of pump n dump that I see, ground loop have huge variability wrt return temp, which can drop efficiency to well BELOW that of air source well before spring. Is risk of higher maintenance and reduced longevity recovered by lower cost and higher efficiencies? Too many "it depends" to honestly say.

Batman, there was no accusation, why is there shame in having emotion play a part in decision making? You delude yourself if you think engineers make decisions without emotion, and that is the only dangerous assumption. There is a lot of risk in this decision that you simply will not be able to put a scale to, so built intuition, emotion, is going to have a big vote at this table.

I've seen sprayfoamed geo houses with HUGE bills. While the argument that water source multi exchange (vs dx) is guaranteed, or even consistently delivers electricity savings in real world I find highly doubtful. And bringing coal plants into the discussion, these are both emotional to me.

Dans numbers are getting much closer to what I'd expect from a good model. From all his posts my intuition tells me he is very good at what he does. Keep in mind, when you take GOOD models and compare to actual they tend to be high. Real world? The cost is what I'd expect from an average 1990's build with basic "high efficiency" equipment.

Sky, you probably sell a lot of geo, so you have skin in this argument. But seeing something go in and tracking results seem to be very different things in this marketplace. Of all the installs you've 'seen', how many have you analyzed the use of? A homeowner telling you "wow our bill is really low", or "January was half of last year" is not data, it's anicdote.

With all the parts of this decision that emotion will have to participate, why do it there?